Need 4Yr Old Boy Birthday Idea/Food/Games

Awwww....just have an old fashioned birthday party:

Pin The Tail on the Donkey ($2 at Party City)
Drop clothespins in the Bottle (possibly free)
Limbo Dance (.99 download of Limbo song)
Bean Bag Toss into a bucket (free?)

Cake & Ice Cream Cups

Giveaways? Get the $1 Hershey Bars and print out over-wrappers that say "Ben's 4th Birthday/Thanks for Coming" and a dollar store book or sidewalk chalk or jump ropes.

Balloons to decorate.

I'm not a fan of themes for the sake of a theme. The kids just enjoy being together & having fun!

My son turned 4 in December. We had a pajama party from 6-7:30pm. We asked that his friends come dressed in their pajamas and bring a blanket or sleeping bag. We made a bed bug craft (a variation off of this ant craft I found on this website) http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/insects/mant.htmI
I painted the egg cartons in bright colors several days before, pre-punched holes with a skewer for antennae and legs. We used multi-colored pipe cleaners for the legs and antennae and stick on googly eyes. I counted out the pipe cleaners and googly eyes for each and put them in their own baggie, so each child had their own kit to get started. I think that helped with the flow of the activity. I also had a lot of adult helpers around to keep everyone going easily. The kids loved it and the task was developmentally age-appropriate. I also got glitter glue for extra detailing. We also had a local cupcake bakery make us bed bug cupcakes off the same idea-basically two mini cupcakes upside down with gummy worms for antennae and legs in brightly colored icing.
We had a pillow sack race (same as potato sack race) and a bedtime race.
For the bedtime race I divided the kids up into two teams. I put a pair of slippers at the starting line for both teams, side by side. Then about 10 paces, I put a bathrobe (or a couple of dad's button down shirts is what we used) a teddy bear about 10 more paces and then a blanket 10 paces after that. Each child had to put on the slippers, put on the robe/shirt, pick up the bear and then cover up with the blanket. Snore 3 times and then race back replacing the items in the correct general area they put them on at. The first team done wins the race. We had pizza, a veggie tray and water to drink. The kids laid on their blankets as they ate and then we had the cupcakes. After that, my son opened his gifts. It was a fabulous time and when it was all said and done I spent about $125 in all.
HTH,
A.

I think I had a dinosaur themed party for my son when he turned 4 (many years ago) but I think the pajama idea is great!

I've done a fishing theme for my kids, even though we have never gone fishing. (They like fish books.) We had the kids use a fishing pole with a clothespin on the end to cast over a rigged-up blanket. My dad was on the other side. He would attach small items (think Dollar Store) and give a tug when the prize was attached. There was also a plastic pool filled with some other toys and lots of crumpled up tissue paper. The kids jumped in and felt for the toys. We had little bubbles around the room for people to blow. For food, we had blue jello with swedish fish in it, goldfish crackers, a fish-shaped birthday cake, and some other snacks that were not thematic... mini pizzas, watermelon, other fruits and veggies, cheese, and crackers.

Have fun!

My kids will be 3 (boy) and 1 (girl) this year and we are doing a Play-Doh party! The 1-year-olds won't really care or be interested in participating anyway, so they can just play in the sand box and in the yard while the "big" kids keep busy with Play-Doh.

I've been scouring the internet for ideas and think that I'm going to set up a long table and have different Play-Doh stations at each seat. Each kid will get to play with each station for 15 minutes and then we'll rotate. Should keep them pretty busy!

The party isn't until the beginning of June, so between now and then, I'm keeping my eyes out for sales and on Craigslist for Play-Doh Fun Factories and picking up Play-Doh when I see it cheap. Bonus: We'll be keeping the Fun Factories as the oldest's birthday presents.

Decorations will be simple: Cheap yellow table cloths (to match the Play-Doh containers), different colored napkins/plates (to match the Play-Doh lids) and different colored balloons. All very cheap!

I'm going to do cupcakes with yellow wrappers and different colored icing on each one, so they look like containers of Play-Doh. How cute is that? :)

Hi! There are some really cute ideas posted already! I have a suggestion of making play dough a part of the party? It would be very inexpensive to make, you could have it as a craft for the kids to do, and you could just put some in a sealed (or even decorated) plastic baggie and they can take some home with them! I would even pick an overall theme for the party (cowboys, dinosaurs,...) and make a poster saying, "Can you make these....." and show pictures of random things that go along with the theme. For example, simple cowboy hat, boot, ect for cowboy theme. For a birthday theme, you could do simple drawings of a party hat, cake, ect.
Have a lot of activites planned, even short on the moment ones like Duck, Duck, Goose and/or Simon Says.
Will the friend party be seperate from the family party? If so, you can easily do simple food. You could make pizza dough, buy cheese and toppings and have them create their own pizza. Or have hot dogs, pretzels, and capri suns! If they have activites to do, they may not even focus much on eating.
Good luck!

I did dinosaurs-had 2 sand tables and buried dinos in them, got dino hats fromthe 99 cent store and gave out bags with dinos in them-we hired a reptile person to come with animals, but it wasnt cheap, but you can do all the rest-we got pizza, salad, fruit and cake from Costco-nice and easy-and what boys dont love dinos! I got ideas from google.

Party city has cute little packets of 10 of little sport balls whistles, etc. We hae a few boys that attend my daughters party. I've gottne them little cars some year and some years I just got the packet from party city. A pinata would be awesome. Not the kind you hhit but the kind you pull the string and it opens. I saw bj's had some soccor style ones.